“EVER HAS IT BEEN THAT LOVE KNOWS NOT ITS OWN DEPTH UNTIL THE HOUR OF SEPARATION.” –– Kahlil Gibran

I just finished a book by Carla Kelly. She is an author I stumbled upon on the many times I browsed Amazon.com. (Thank you Amazon for that button “Other who have bought this have also bought . . .”) One of the predominant things I noticed in Carla Kelly’s Reforming Lord Ragsdale is that she really made the reader fear that the hero, Lord Ragsdale, and the heroine, Emma Costello, would not actually work things out. Up until nearly the very last page, I thought that the characters were going to be separated permanently. I was so worked up about it! As the last pages of the book dwindled and there was no resolution I feared that maybe there was a sequel and I would not get that high a reader gets when they have their happily ever after. But alas, it was the perfect ending, but they had to endure a significant separation and ultimate conflict resolution has not been better. Carla Kelly really has a talent for putting the reader on that precipice and I finished the book with a complete book hangover. Along the way, I found myself seeing her foreshadowing of the separation. She offered just enough hope to make me think that it could work out, and then masterfully snatched it away in the next scene, making my emotional commitment to read to the end of the book even more intense. I thought, “Would they ever get together? When will she find out he loves her? Will she be bold enough to risk it all by confessing her admiration?” I just didn’t know! I was torn and the angst of it all was searing and crippling. I could do nothing but read until they found each other and the happily ever after was found. I realized that is the key to a great book!––Fear of separation! Any great romance will evolve; scene after scene will show the characters moving and little steps are made creating a buildup of the reader’s hope. Most of the time the book starts with two different characters who seem so wrong for each other for so many reasons, but little by little, the reader is shown that her unique qualities fill a void that make him a better person. Or his strength moves her toward self-correction. Little by little we see how opposites, when combined, create one great whole. But . . . just as we are about to see the characters finally confess their love and they live happily ever, the author rips it from the reader with a tool called separation. So I asked myself, what is it about separation that makes men like Mr. Darcy move personal mountains like pride or prejudice. Or why when they are separated do ladies like Elizabeth Bennet finally recognize the depth of their commitment?

I think it comes to the old adage, “It is a better to love and have lost, than to never have loved at all.” Separation pushes us to the brink of it all and makes us realize what really matters. All the previous fears, or the anxiety of rejection, the selfishness, the acknowledgment of needing someone, or even the basic hurdle of learning to trust another human being with our heart; it all is a wash when we realize that we might lose the very thing that makes us happy. That is the moment when we look ourselves in the eye and ask if we will listen to our heart and fight for love, or rationalize away our own happiness by overthinking it all. In Hope for Georgiana, my current work in progress that I hope to finish by the end of February, we are still in the build up stage where love is evolving and is beginning to become clear to the reader but may not quite be clear to the characters. It is a thrilling time too, but I am already getting excited for the anxious moment where they are forced to be separated. For as Kahlil Gibran, the writer and poet said, “Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.” I can’t wait for the moment when Georgiana finally recognizes Mr. Pastel’s adoration and then it is snatched from her as soon as she realizes it. Do I sound masochistic? Perhaps. Really I am simply a resolution addict and separation is the vessel in which it must come. Just as surely as an IV drug addict does not enjoy the needles, nor do I enjoy the separation, but the high afterwards far exceeds the discomfort inflicted. I suppose being a resolution addict means I just want to see two people that I have learned to love, and who deserve all the happiness that God can give them, find their happily ever after. Jeanna EllsworthHey Lady Publications

What about after the resolution? There's a trope by the name of Shipping Bed Death that states the tendency for fans to lost interest in a couple the moment they become a couple. They were only interested in the "get together", and bored by the "be together". What you describe here sounds like that.

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About the Author

Jeanna is a mother of three daughters, all whom are well versed in Pride and Prejudice; they are her best friends and the inspiration for her writing. She also proudly states she is the eighth of thirteen children. When she isn’t blogging, gardening, cooking, or raising chickens—or more realistically, writing—she is thoroughly ignoring her house for a few hours at a time in order to read yet another romance novel. Somewhere between being a mom, sister, writer, and cook, she squeezes in three 12-hour shifts each week as a Registered Nurse in a Neurological ICU. She finds great joy in her writing and claims she has never been happier.

Jeanna fell in love again with Jane Austen when she was introduced to the incredible world of Jane Austen inspired fiction. She can never adequately thank the fellow authors who mentored her and encouraged her to write her first novel. Through writing, Jeanna has gained something that no one can take away from her: hope for her own Mr. Darcy. More than anything, she hopes to prepare her three best friends to look for their own Mr. Darcy and to settle for nothing less. Jeanna’s works include: Mr. Darcy’s Promise, Pride and Persistence, To Refine Like Silver, Hope For Mr. Darcy, and Hope For Fitzwilliam. She is eagerly working on her first attempt at an original Regency romance novel: Inspired By Grace. For more information on these books, please visit her website, www.HeyLadyPublications.com